Participants included Australian labour law academics; leading industrial relations and management scholars; and experts in the field of collective bargaining regulation from the USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand.

The workshop focused on the collective bargaining framework introduced by the Australian Labor Government under the 2009 Fair Work Act. It involved the first detailed, inter-disciplinary and comparative exploration of the legislation.

"The Fair Work Act adopts a more constructive approach to the encouragement of collective bargaining than the legislation that preceded it; however it is still inconsistent with Australia's obligations in international law in a number of important respects," Professor Breen Creighton said.

The workshop concluded with a panel discussion involving practitioners from the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Industry Group, Freehills law firm and Fair Work Australia.

All papers were of a high standard and provided valuable insights into the different approaches to collective bargaining. Papers will be published as an edited collection in 2011.

The workshop was sponsored by the College of Business and the Centre for Governance, Work and Technologies, RMIT; and the Workplace and Corporate Law Research Group, Monash University.